Augustine For Today
December 22
“True friendship, which is not measured by temporal concerns but takes delight in gratuitous love, traces its origins in that celestial republic of which Christ is King. Thus, no one can truly be a friend to another unless he is first friend to the Truth itself, and if such friendship is not gratuitous it does not exist at all. Many things have been said on this matter by philosophers, yet in their works there is no true piety, in other words no sincere worship of God from which all the duties of an honest life must be derived.”
Letter 155, 1-2
Augustine For Today
December 20
“Let us leave a little room for reflection, room too for silence. Enter into yourself, leave behind all noise and confusion. Look within yourself and see whether there be some sweet hidden place in your consciousness where you can be free of noise and argument, where you need not be carrying on your disputes and planning to have your own stubborn way. Hear the word in quietness that you may understand it.
Sermon 56. 22
Augustine For Today
December 19
“Upon the love of friends, I readily cast myself without reservation, especially when chafed and wearied by the scandals of this world; and in their love I rest without any disturbing care: for I perceive that God is there. … When I perceive that a man is burning with Christian love and feel that thereby he has been made a faithful friend to me, whatever plans or thoughts of mine I entrust to him I regard as entrusted not to the man, but to God.”
Letter 73, 20
Augustine For Today
December 18
“When pride has crept into a servant of God, straightaway envy is to be found there too. The proud person cannot help being envious. Envy is the daughter of pride; but this mother is unable to be barren; wherever she is, she immediately gives birth … If your thoughts run on these lines, you won’t be great in your own eyes. After all, what you should rather be thinking about is what you lack, instead of what advantages you have … If you’re thinking of how much you’re still falling short, you start groaning; and when you groan, you are worrying about yourself, you will be humble, you will walk more securely, you won’t tumble over a cliff, you won’t be puffed up like a balloon. … First among the vices … is pride, next envy. It’s not envy, you see, that has given birth to pride, but pride has given birth to envy. It’s only a love of excelling, after all, that is envious.”
Sermon 354, 5-6
Augustine For Today
December 17
“It is one thing to throw off a fever, another to recover from the weakness which the fever leaves behind it; it is one thing to remove from the body a weapon stuck in it, another to heal the wound it made with a complete cure. The first stage of the healing is to remove the cause of the debility, and this is done by pardoning all sins. The second stage is healing the debility itself, and this is done gradually by making steady progress in the renewal of this image of God.”
The Trinity XIV.17.23
Augustine For Today
December 16
“Do not stay outside yourself, but enter within yourself, because within the interior person truth dwells; and if you find that your nature is changeable, transcend yourself; never forget that in climbing above the heights of yourself, you are lifting yourself higher than your soul, which is gifted with reason. Direct your steps, therefore, to where the light of reason is enkindled.”
On True Religion 39, 72
Augustine For Today
December 15
“Be particularly mindful of the poor, so that what you deprive yourself of by living sparingly, you may lay away in heavenly treasures. Let the needy Christ receive what the fasting Christian deprives himself of. Let the restraint of the willing soul be the sustenance of the one in need. Let the voluntary neediness of the one who has an abundance become the necessary abundance of the one in need.”
Sermon 210,10,12
Augustine For Today
December 10
“Everyone must do what he or she can. If one person is not capable of as much as another, then he or she can still attain it in the other who does have this capability. The condition is that one love and esteem in the other the attainments which one does not have because of one’s own limitations. Thus, the person with fewer capabilities ought not to impede the person with more; nor should those who are more gifted put pressure on others who are less gifted. You have to render an account of your conscience to God alone. But the only thing that you owe one another is love for one another.”
Letter 130.16.31
Augustine For Today
December 5
“O Lord my God, my one hope, listen to me lest out of weariness I should stop wanting to seek you, but let me seek your face always, and with ardor. Do you yourself give me the strength to seek, having caused yourself to be found and having given me the hope of finding you more and more. Before you lies my strength and my weakness; preserve the one, heal the other. Before you lies my knowledge and my ignorance; where you have opened to me, receive me as I come in; where you have shut to me, open to me as I knock. Let me remember you, let me understand you, let me love you. Increase these things in me until you refashion me entirely.”
On the Trinity 15.51
Augustine For Today
December 2
“Inasmuch as the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, he was reared and grew up. After suffering, dying, and rising again, he received as his inheritance the kingdom of heaven. It was in being man that he received resurrection and eternal life. In being man he received it. In being the Word, he did not receive it, because the Word abides unchangingly from everlasting to everlasting. So, because it was that flesh, which rose again and being quickened ascended into heaven, that received resurrection and eternal life, this too he promised to us. We are waiting for that very inheritance, eternal life.”
Sermon 22, 10